


Pokémonsterotica

by pokemonsterotica



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Blood and Violence, Chose Your Starter Pokemon, Dystopia, F/F, F/M, Gothic, Group Sex, Lovecraft Monsters, M/M, Masochism, Multi, Pokemon Battle, Rituals
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-18
Updated: 2017-02-03
Packaged: 2018-08-31 18:43:27
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8589532
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pokemonsterotica/pseuds/pokemonsterotica
Summary: After Pokémon Go was released, we were talking through the Pokémon lore, and discussing how you could put quite a dark, grown-up spin on it, if you re imagined them as demons. You summon demons, bind them with you life-force, order them to do your bidding, etc. The more we joked about it, the more it worked for me.I stared imagining the magic system (Brandon Sanderson) in a Gothic world (Mervyn Peake) with a new-wierd vibe (China Miéville), some dark YA-dystopia tropes (Paolo Bacigalupi) and a masochist protagonist (Jacqueline Carey).The very next day I saw James Coffron’s ‘pokémonstrosities‘ artwork and thought they were just perfect!I added the bad-pulp-erotica my partner wanted into the mix.(Actually, ‘good’-pulp-erotica would have been preferred, but this is the best I could managed…)Baked (half-baked?) until done.Release into the chaosphere of the internet.Did my evil laugh.





	1. Ritual of Initiation

**Author's Note:**

> First post here so feedback appreciated :-)

“This is your last chance to back out, you know,” said Professor Willow gently, not looking at me. I choked back an incredulous laugh. I was seventeen years old, and I hadn't been coddled like a child for a long time.

“I had to ask.” He reached over, still staring away into the fire and squeezed my hand.

This time I didn’t laugh, my throat clenched-up with fear. “I know.”

We both knew I was going through with it. Nobody gets to the final pokéball ceremony then bails at the last minute. Professor Willow gestured reluctantly at the soup of noxious fluids bubbling in the the shallow pan.

The black bandolier lay across my lap. Six pokéballs, each the size of an orange, snug in their webbing. Pokéballs are iconic: one hemisphere blood red, the other hemisphere bone white, with a small silver disk on the equator. These six had taken me a whole year to make - but they were solid red and white balls - they had no triggers yet.

The white halves are dead easy (excuse the pun). Take the bones of a loved one (my father) who was killed by a pokémonstrosity (a Nidoking) and grind it to dust. Mix this with pure white Sinnoh clay and shape it into a perfect half sphere. Dilute a clear glaze with holy water and fire it. Inscribe glyphs of sealing into the next layer of glaze and fire it again. Glaze, glyph and fire, again and again and again, until the mad priests tell you it’s good enough. If you get a single glyph a tiny bit wrong, start the whole thing all over again. Easy.

The red halves are even easier. Cut a block of wood from your totem tree (mine is ash). Sand it into a perfect half sphere (no other tools allowed except for sandpaper). Stain the wood red with your own blood. Inscribe glyphs of sealing into the wood. Stain and glyph, stain and glyph, again and again, until… you get the idea.

When you hold the two halves together, they seal up, zzzZZzzshp. Like two magnets clicking together. Nothing will separate them again, they seal stronger than glue and it takes a sledgehammer to crack one to pieces.

Everyone agrees that it’s the triggers that are tricky. I flipped the first trigger off my thumb, like a coin, the little silver disk spinning up in the air before landing in the pan with a splop. A drop splashed onto the Professor’s white lab coat, staining it a dark red-brown as he tried to smear it away. He still didn’t look at me (the Professor isn’t good at eye-contact) but he sighed his disappointed sigh. That burst my bubble of bravado and I dropped the other five into the mix carefully, like feeding pennies into a piggy bank.

“Have you decided,” Professor Willow began hesitantly, “which chakra you wish to leave clear?”

“Uh-huh,” I confirmed, “third-eye! I want to keep my inner guidance unclouded.”

That quirked a smile on Willow’s joyless lips. “You were listening after all.”

The glyphs of sealing keep a pokémonstrosity locked tight inside a pokéball, but it takes a direct tap into a summoner’s life force to cram the pokémon back inside the ball after they’re released. Each ball is bonded to a summoner’s chakra point. Seven points and six balls, leaves one chakra point free to call your own.

You see, the bonding works both ways. You can drag the pokémon back into the ball, but the pokémon can also influence your chakra via the same bonding. Each chakra point influences a summoner’s temperament; the root point affects sexuality, the sacral point influences aggression, and so on. If you keep a fire pokemon in a pokéball bonded to your root, you’re going to feel hot and horny. If you keep an ice pokemon in your root pokéball, you’d be an icicle in the sack. My plan was to keep a steel type in that pokéball... (kidding!)

Whichever chakra you leave free is your own, forever, never to be swayed. Which one you leave free says a lot about what kind of summoner you want to be. In some parts of the world, summoners with the same free chakra points form schools and guilds, but we didn't even have a proper academy in Pallet Town yet.

Still, it made Professor Willow happy. He was third-eye free, and had recommended that I do the same. “The pokémonstrosities you catch will sway your thoughts and feelings, that’s inevitable. But as long as you keep your third-eye free and learn to listen to the quiet voice of your intuition, you’ve always got a chance to find the right path.”

It sounded like good advice to me, and the Prof had been all the way around this infested rock ball of a planet a few times now, so it clearly worked for him.

“Alright, Ketchum, they’re nearly ready. What do you want for the pain; booze, pills or both?”

I heard myself saying, “Nothing, I want the pain.” And I wondered why I was saying that; I’d never told anybody that, but it was true, and Willow’s lips gave another almost-smile quirk.

“Shall we start from the root or the crown?” he asked, as if we were discussing the best way to wash a filthy wall.

“Let’s do it like the ash tree grows, from the ground up to the sky.” I shrugged off my robe, not at all cold in the warm stale air of the bunker, and stretched out naked, stomach-down on the rusty army cot by the fire.

The bunkers are the only reason Pallet Town still exists. They were underneath a military complex once, miles of plain corridors and lifeless boxes, spiralling down, level after level. The base above ground was destroyed back at the start of the Fall; town legend gives that dubious honour to the Thunduros, when it was passing through Kanto. Pallet Town sprung up in the ruins of the old base, with the bunkers to fall back on whenever the monstrosities attack. We've never thrived, but we've survived, which is more than can be said for a lot of communities.

The bunker Prof Willow had chosen for this ceremony was far out West, all the way down Anarchy, Shinto and Candycane. Nobody lived or worked this far out, so there'd be nobody around to hear me scream. It was long-term storage space for non-consumables, half-busted furniture and old-world relics that nobody knew what to do with.

I watched the Professor keenly as he fished the first trigger disk out of the boiling gloop with a pair of surgical tongs. “Don’t move,” he said, “breath gently”. But I knew the drill.

With a practiced hand he dropped the trigger precisely onto the root chakra of my tailbone and my world disintegrated into pain. I felt fire and ice charging through my veins. Every muscle screamed and jittered with neon ecstasy. The belt of life force running from the top of my head, down to my tailbone pulsed and flared, threatening to explode like a firework. The trigger disk sunk into my flesh, sizzling until it lay perfectly flush with my skin, where it quickly cooled and set. I came to my senses properly and I was standing again, I looked down in amazement. I’d known beforehand that the root chakra governs sexuality, and I’d also known beforehand that on some level I found pain to be sexually arousing, but I hadn’t quite put two and two together before this moment: my cock looked enormous, and hard enough to hammer nails with.

I could feel the play of breeze and flames around the fire caressing my swollen bell-end with more earth-shaking intensity than I’d ever felt from the mouth of a ten-dollar whore. My nerves were electric. The world was moving in slow motion. I needed to fuck or I was going to explode like a nuke and take half of Pallet Town with me. That’s all I could think of, and the only person here, was my hard-case mentor, Professor Willow.

Now, you don’t get to be a master-summoner of Willow’s expertise without being able to read the body-language of wild pokémon, and my body language wasn’t subtle. I’d not taken more than half a step towards him when he moved even faster than my supercharged senses could anticipate, stepped inside my arms and took a vice like grip on the shaft of my cock with one hand, and brought the tongs in his other hand under to pinch tight on one of my balls. The sensations that tore through me had every muscle taut to trembling point.

“Looks like we need to vent a little steam if we’re to finish this job, Ketchum, and I can’t say I’m entirely unhappy about that. But we do this my way, how I say. Understand?”

I gave a little nod. I could see my face reflected in the Professor’s glasses and my pupils were the size of dinner plates. The tongs dropped to the floor and with a deft flick he undid his belt. A shimmy of the hips and his heavy jeans, with their pockets crammed full of keys, slid down to his boots. Another shake and his skivvies joined them. He turned away from me slowly, never releasing that wicked grip on my throbbing cock; if anything he turned his nails into my flesh a little more as he twisted away, making me hiss through my teeth and push against his hand a little harder.

With his spare hand he pulled a tube of something mostly clear, with a tinge of mauve from his lab coat pocket and snapped the top off with his teeth. "Not the strangest thing I've used for lube," he muttered under his breath. He applied it liberally to my cock, which set my spine jangling like a windchime, and slathered more on himself.

With a slow, deliberate flourish he let go, shuffled over to the other cot, his jeans around his ankles, flipped his long lab coat over to one side, then bent to grip the bars of the cot firmly with both hands. “Let’s see what you’ve got”.

He was just so damn controlled about the whole situation. It made me mad. I wanted to put a crack in that shell. I wanted to shake him up.I kind of roared as I approached him, and thrust so blindly as I pawed at his hips, that I’m surprised it went in, but it did. Then I fucked him, as hard and fast as I physically could. This wasn’t like the fumbles in the dark I was used to. This was like a gun to the head saying fuck or die, and every passionate thrust and grunt was a blinding ball of light building around the trigger disk that had burned it’s way into my root point just seconds before. I was going to fire laser beams and holy glory. I had a second of reality slapping me in the face, as my naked sweaty body pounded ferociously, and realised that over the last year of training, I’d grown to love the strange man beneath me. I reached out to touch the scarred imprint of a trigger disk on his own root chakra. I was going to cum so hard that Willow would be blasted across the bunker on a torrent of rainbow lava. Then I did.

It went on and on and on. I didn’t know any human body could store so much jizz in its balls, let alone mine. But I wasn’t there any more. I’d gone somewhere else that was dark and silent and eternal. There was me, and there was the glowing disk embedded in my lower back. And I said, ‘yes, you are part of me now.’ And the glow merged with me until I was lit throughout, like a glass sculpture with a soft inner fire.

“One down,” the Prof wheezed from beneath me, “just the five more to go”. I wanted to kiss him on the lips, or ask him what he’d meant when he said he wasn’t unhappy about this. I wanted to know if his world had just exploded as much as mine, or just have him hold me until I stopped buzzing.

But Willow didn’t do any of that. He just got dressed and we got back to business. He didn’t say another word about it, and there was too much else going on for me to dwell on it; it was just a thing that happened.

For the next four trigger disks, I had to lay on my back and this time the Prof took no chances. He bound me to the cot with leather strips, and not just a four-point restraint at wrists and ankles; he wound them around my knees, thighs, elbows, and shoulders. I was trussed up good.

Willow dropped the disks onto me in quick succession. After the first one I was thrashing and heaving as much as I could, but his aim never strayed. He had a rhythm like a metronome; drop and turn and catch the next disk and turn and aim and drop; sacral, naval, heart and throat. Within 30 seconds I had four sizzling points marching from my groin to my throat, and my god it hurt. It didn’t blow my mind the way the root disk had, but it still set me to clenching and convulsing and gasping like a seizure-fit. Apparently it also gave me another massive hard-on, although I hadn’t noticed until Professor Willow clamped his mouth around it.

The Professor must be one hell of a rodeo rider, judging from the way he read my heaving body, and kept the silky-smooth motion of that blow-job flowing. The world had driven my skittering mind away from my body with it’s raw, searing pains, but that steady, bobbing mouth and the lush, swirling tongue threw me a lifeline and reeled me back in. As the pain slacked-off and the pleasure rose up, I found my hips straining against the leather ties for no other reason than to inch me further between those lips. I opened my eyes and saw him watching me. He knew exactly what he was doing. He slowed down, started to disengage.

He toyed with me for a bit, taking me close to the edge and then backing back down. I’d forgotten all about the silver disks melted into my skin by now. I just wanted him to let me cum. As he brought me to the cusp again, I was all ready to start begging, but he slid first one, then two fingers inside me, finger-fucking me to the counterpoint rhythm of his blow-job. It was too much, and I came into his mouth. It wasn’t a torrent of glitter and candyfloss this time; just a run of the mill, mouthful of jism, but it was so, so, good. I collapsed back, a happy man.

“One left,” Professor Willow said. I looked up at him, and he was smiling. A true smile. The first I’d ever seen on his face.

Professor Willow had never been pretty, not even as a young man, but years of striving to become a pokémon master had given him a lean, whipcord body and an aura of power and authority. That’s not to say he was ugly, but if he’d been a farmer or an engineer, you’d have probably called him plain. Rugged if you were feeling generous. But at that moment, to me, his sparkling, knowing eyes were lit up like they’d sucked in the stars and he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.

He nodded to the floor near the fire. “Come. Sit.”

I dragged my weary body to where I’d been directed; the silver disks still embedded in my skin flashed as they caught the flickering fire light. Only one to go, I was nearly a pokémon summoner! A wave of exhausted exaltation buoyed my heavy feet until I collapsed down, my legs folding into a well-practiced semi-meditative slump; crossed legs, hands on knees, palms up.

Priests say a lot of things about the crown chakra point. If I’d wanted to join the Mission further down the road, I’d have stayed ‘crown-free’, but I’d had my fill of mad priests. The pokémonstrosities could whisper to my ‘higher consciousness’ all day long, as long as they did what I told them when it was time to come out and play.

Willow dumped a jug of water over my head, slowly, to get the hair good and sodden. Then he brushed it away from my crown, and with scissors and razor, carefully trimmed a little bald spot on the very top of my head.

“Never could stand the smell of burning hair,” he muttered, half to himself.

I heard the splop, but didn’t look up as the final, sizzling trigger disk was lifted from the boiling gloop. When it touched down on my skull, I didn’t feel any pain.

Instead, I found myself outside of my body entirely, watching the scene from the other side of the fire. The moment was frozen, and I could feel all these different direction tugging at me. It’s hard to put an experience like that into words but I knew, just knew, that those were different futures tugging at me. Different paths. I reached out for one where I became a world renowned pokémon master: a legend-hunter. It was there, but it was a long way off. I saw flickers of the path I’d need to walk, getting fainter and fainter the further into the future they got. But I saw what I needed to do next, to set my feet on that path.

Calm as you like, with the trigger still melting it’s way into my scalp, I stood up. I kissed the Professor full on the lips, with an awful lot of tongue, and slid my hand firmly inside his loosely buckled jeans.

“When I walk out of that gate tomorrow, you’re going to find it hard to stop thinking about this.” I said, my voice calm and even.

I knocked my forehead against his and whispered, quiet as the night, “and I’ll always love you.”

Then just as he’d done earlier, I turned, walked those few steps to the rusty army cot, bent to take a firm grip on the bars, then let the moment hang. It didn’t last long.

The first time had been savage, primal lust. The need to fuck him greater than my need to breath air. The second time had been salvation. He’d done exactly what I needed to pull me through that trial of fire. This time, the third time, was the best saved for last; a gift freely given and thankfully taken. And boy, did he take it.

I fancied his breath was a touch ragged as he approached, and he started on me with his fingers again, rather than letting his cock lead the way. He was more tender than I’d expected, generous with his lube, and I soon started rocking back and forth to the steady rhythm Willow had set. I knew he was stretching me, adding a third finger, then a fourth, but I wasn’t thinking more than a heartbeat ahead. When the Professor reached between my legs to tug at my balls and scrape his nails down my shaft, I pushed back against his probing fingers, and we both knew I was ready.

Describing all this to you, I probably sound like a ten-dollar rent boy myself, but I’ve always been a straight talker. I say it just how I remember it, and I don’t hold nothing back out of respect for highfalutin notions like decency and propriety. It won’t help, of course, that I’ve started my tale here, on a night of epic fucking; if I’d started the story a year before, you’d have waited a good long time before I ever got my rocks off, and even then it weren’t nothing special. But this is where my story really starts, this is how I became a pokemon summoner and set myself on the path to becoming a legend-hunter.

I’d never had a cock in my ass before that night, but I absolutely fucking loved it. I savoured every delicious second. I writhed and arched, pushed back and moaned, I gasped and groaned and let him know precisely how much I was enjoying myself.

Neither of us had said a word during any of the sex that night. We’d let our bodies do all the talking, and understood each other just fine. But something snapped in me as he raked his nails down my back, as I bowed my forehead down onto the twisted frame of the old army cat.

“Ohhh, yeeaah,” I moaned loudly. He slowed down for a couple of beats, surprised to hear words. “No, don’t. Please don’t stop. Please!” He picked the pace back up. “I need it,” I begged. “ I need you. Please, please don’t ever stop fucking me. I love you inside me. I want to feel you cum. Do it. Give it to me. Do it. Fuck me! Harder, faster now; don’t make me wait. Oh, god you’re going to make me lose it again. I can feel it. Yes, do it! Now!”

He slammed into me a final time and came, shaking, locked tight against me. I came too, splattering just a little across the bunker floor. I’d never cum without anyone touching my cock before. Never known I could. It was pretty fucking intense; again! I was grinning from ear to ear. On the floor in front of me, covered in jizz, lay one of the trigger-disks that had fallen from my chest. If my flesh had released them, the ceremony was done. I was a fully fledged pokémon summoner forevermore.

I picked up the disk I could see and flashed it over my shoulder at Professor Willow. “We did it,” I said, “I’m a summoner.”

The Professor withdrew from me slowly, reluctantly. His voice, when he spoke had returned to it’s regular, flat and controlled inflection. “I’ve initiated nearly fifty summoners since I stopped my wandering. Many of those kids are dead now.”

Perhaps his voice wasn’t quite as flat as usual, there was a tiny little echo in his tone; wistfulness, or maybe a smidgen of wonder?

“I’ve seen kids scream through the suffering. I’ve seen them drugged-up and babbling in tongues. I’ve watched a couple of good kids break down and lose their minds entirely, midway through. That’s tough. I thought, before tonight, that I’d seen every different way to endure that initiation ceremony. It’s not a ritual I keenly anticipate officiating, but I accept how it’s necessary, and try and make it quick and clean as possible.

But I ain’t never, in all my days, seen or heard of anyone relishing it the way you just did. Maybe there have been others, I mean, I don’t plan to tell the priests about this, so I suppose there may have been more like you, who came alive under the trigger disks like they had the glory of the lord pumping through their veins. Their masters wouldn’t have spoken up neither, so how would I have ever heard? Makes you think. Yes, sirree. 

Do me a favour, Ketchum? Don't get dead.”

That’s about the longest speech I ever heard out of Willow. We dressed in silence.

He helped me collect off the dusty floor the six trigger disks that had shivered from their indentations in my flesh, then held my pokéballs for me one at a time as I pressed the disks into place on the join, where the red and white halves meet. The triggers merged seamlessly with the balls with this quiet little snick. It was like they’d always been there.

“You need to get some rest.” Willow said. “It’s another big day tomorrow.”

“Do you know, “ I asked, “who is graduating with me? Or what our starter pokémonstrosity are?”

“Yes,” he admitted. “But I won’t be telling you. You’ll be fine. Trust me. Go home. Go sleep.”

I slung the bandolier of pokeballs across my back and stepped close to give him a last, long kiss. His hair felt greasy in my hand. He hadn’t showered in a couple of days and smelt ripe. I felt like my feet were back on the earth, I wasn’t floating any more. Everything was dirty and tattered and real. I was exhausted. I went home.


	2. First Catch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- rough first draft, need to revise/polish later

In Pallet Town-above, the streets don’t have real names - there aren’t enough to need them. But the maze of corridors in Pallet Town-below is easy to get lost in, everywhere looks the same. Rather than assigning them words, like proper roads in proper cities, someone back in the early years of the comm started giving them symbols. It’s easy to cut a stencil in a some card, then spray-paint that shape at every junction.

In the center of PT-under, the shapes are kindergarten fare - square, circle, star and cross - that kind of stuff. The further out, or deeper under you venture, the more obscure the symbols get. Retreading my route home took me back down Candycane (which was half-flooded at one point - I had to wade through sludge-puddled up to my knees), Shinto (which is above the Utes lab and used for their venting, so it’s hot as hell) and Anarchy (nothing exciting about this corridor, except it’s so long your footsteps echo and echo and echo until you’re half convinced you’re being followed).

That takes about an hour and gets you to the outskirts of Pallet Town proper, where the nexus of bunkers and stairways weave together so tight no symbol lasts more than a hundred steps. I share a spot with my Ma in PT-above on the far side of town, so I still had a dozen staircases to climb and another twenty minute hike in the rain before I could collapse into bed.

When the bunker doors swung shut behind me after the ritual of initiation, I already felt like shit warmed-up, so you can imagine how appealing this commute sounded. I put my feet on auto-pilot and let my mind wander while I walked.

Ma never wanted me to be a Summoner. Like the Prof said, a lot of kids die their first year after walking out the gate. She thinks maybe I’ve got a death wish, like I can’t wait to go be with Da. She can’t bare the idea of outliving us both.

I’m pretty sure that ain't true, although the idea of death don’t put me off none. If it’s my time, it’s my time. This life ain’t really mine - that’s how I see it - it was given to me to tend for a while, and when Mother Earth wants it back, she’ll just reach out and take it, easy as plucking ripe berries - and there ain’t a whole deal that sulking and praying is gonna do about that.

The way I see it, Mother Earth has been kind enough to give me this much life, even if I get no more, and I should show my gratitude by clearing some of the parasites off her back while I’m here. In my nightmares the Mother’s twisting and bucking, ‘cos these pokémonstrosities itch and burn her where they walk, like my own Ma’s tied up in a hornets nest, getting stung over and over again.

It ain’t just the little itches I want to crush, it’s the big ones. The legends; the Winged Mirages, the Johto Trio, the Titans, the Forces of Nature; and all those other city destroying bastards. Before the monstrosities arrived humans owned this planet. We built towers that scraped the sky, and flew our kids to the moon for a holiday. Now we hide underground and hope against hope that the monsters don’t hear us. Yes, I’ll probably die out there - but I have to try and make a difference.

Ma don’t understand me, and I don’t understand her - she does a brilliant job in this comm, organising our supplies, making sure we all survive. But the human species surviving ain’t enough. This is our planet; I want it back.

Such was the gist of my whirling thoughts as my feet plodded homeward.

Then, about a third of the way down Anarchy, the wall exploded up ahead.

As I said, Anarchy echoes like a bitch when it’s just your own footsteps keeping you company. A full-on explosion ripped the air down that shaft like a hurricane, slammed a ringing shockwave through my head for a instant, then it all went silent.

The adrenaline started pumping, and it all went slow-mo, jittering freeze-frames as my eyes tried to focus through swirling smoke.

A man crawled out the smashed wall, coughing and limping. Another followed. They both wore torn and bloodied lab coats. They were carrying shotguns and had coshes hanging from their equipment belts. They didn’t see me. I didn’t move to help.

Something small and yellow came out of the rubble after them. It moved like a pinball, ricocheting from wall to wall in the tight corridor, slashing at their hands, throats and faces. One of the lab boys raised his shotgun and fired. He missed the yellow thing but caught his buddy’s arm. That guy hit the deck and the yellow thing was on his face.

About this point I stopped spectating and snapped back to reality. That little yellow fucker was a pikachu! An electric rat bastard. They’re not uncommon around Pallet Town, but there was a fucking pokémonstrosity, loose inside the comm! It didn’t make sense. The lab boys had shotguns - I assumed (correctly) they were loaded with rock salt - and stone koshes - textbook weapons for human-vs-pikachu, so they knew exactly what they were hunting, but no alarms had gone off - there are sirens way out in the storage bunkers, so Willow and I would’ve heard them. What the fuck was going on?

Lab Boy Two was thrashing and kicking, and Lab Boy One couldn’t use his shotgun, and couldn’t get his cosh released from his belt. Fucking amateurs were going to get themselves killed!

We call pikachu rats, because we hate them both, but they don’t actually look much like rats. Sure, they’re small, if it were friendly you could hold it with one arm easy enough, but they’re barrel chested and strong, just as happy on two legs as four. They’re built more like tiny yellow bears than rats. Their ears aren’t round and pink, they’re long and thin and leathery, with black tips. Rats have pointy noses; pikachu have flat, round faces and a maw full of savage, serrated teeth. Pikachu have pouches on their cheeks that store electricity and release it in devastating attacks; rats don’t.

I think the pikachu found Boy Two’s jugular about this point, because the thrashing died off and his mate lost the plot. He gave up on his weapon and tried to stamp the rat. It worked - a bit. He smashed his boot down on the pikachu’s tail. It stopped tearing his mate’s throat out and gave him it’s full attention. I guessed what was about to happen because I’d been studying this stuff for the last ten years, and if he’d stopped to think, Lab Boy probably would have known too, but his red mist was down (like, all the way down), and ideas like ‘stopping’ and ‘thinking’ were a long way from his headspace.

He tried to stamp again, the pikachu dodged. He tried to stamp again, the pikachu dodged again. When he drew his foot back to kick that furry yellow fucker all the way down the corridor to me, the pikachu decided it’d had enough and unleashed a Thunder Shock. The lightning flash left purple after-images dancing in my eyes, and even at range it gave me pins and needles in my fingers. Lab Boy fell down next to his erstwhile buddy; dead, stunned or paralyzed - I couldn’t tell. If he’d only been stunned I think the pikachu would’ve gone for his throat, like it did with the first guy - but it didn’t. Likewise, if the Thunder Shock had killed him, I reckon pikachu would’ve taken a breather or looked around (and seen me) - but it didn’t. I can’t say for sure, but I’m ninety percent confident that poor bastard was still alive and alert but paralysed when the pikachu started gnawing and burrowing into his guts.

And now I hit my moment of indecision. I’d been a pokémonstrosity summoner for barely half an hour, I hadn’t slept yet, and this creature has already killed two armed men in two minutes. I was empty-handed, but I had a full bandolier of empty pokeballs. The prudent move would be to hightail it back to Willow. He’d have something in his team that could mince this thing, no doubt. But the thought only crossed my mind long enough to be dismissed. I wasn’t going to let that little bastard chew through two comm-mates, even if I didn’t know them personally, while I ran away. This fur-face was mine.

Pikachu hearing is sensitive - better than human - so if that explosion had scrambled my hearing it would’ve been even worse for it. Even so, there was no point taking chances so I quickly yanked off my boots and set them carefully aside. It had it’s back to me, neck deep in the lab-boy's guts. As I glanced up, it actually dug in further, front paws disappearing inside his stomach cavity.

Electric-type monstrosity are weak to earth attacks. That’s why the lab boys were rocking (excuse the pun) rock-salt shotguns and granite coshes. Employing my full range of ninja-stealth techniques I crept closer and closer to the bloody scene. Ten feet away; the lab boy’s t-shirt has pulled up, and I can see the skin around the stomach bulging as the pikachu gorges on his gizzards. Six feet away. I visualise the play.

Flow my weight all the way onto my back foot, arms loose. Take a firm, but gentle grip around the chunk of brickwork that’s exploded out of the wall just behind me. Swing the rubble up, get a feel for it’s shape and weight distribution as I do, as it comes past my waist let my body follow its parabolic curve; drive the leap from shoulders, hips, thighs, knees, and feet. We have takeoff. Midair, focus on the target, adjust the body position between you and the chunk, of rubble, make sure you stay in control. When your feet hit the floor, the rat-fucker will feel the vibration, even if its ears are shot, it’s going to pull back from his gore-hole to see what’s up. That’s when we’ll slam this bad-boy on it's face. Stay alert for the dodge; you know it's fast.

With that much momentum behind it, it’s fucking hard to steer a big chunk of rock at the last second. Pikachu dodged right even faster than anticipated, across its victim’s groin, and I damn near broke my wrist tracking after it. But I managed. I didn’t get it’s skull, but I crashed my lump of rubble across his back, and pulverised the poor lab boy’s nuts at the same time.

I did a lot of damage, but this pikachu’s always been a gutsy little thing, and he wasn’t done yet. His  cheek pads started wiffling; he still had juice for another Thunder Shock! I rolled for one of the shotguns and snatched it up with adrenaline-charged accuracy. I’m pretty sure I fired first, but the pain of the salt shards made the pikachu discharge too.

Let it never be said that I am without sympathy for those I’ve unleashed Pikachu’s Thunder Shock upon. I know exactly how agonising it is. I didn’t get paralysed (thank the Mother) but I came round retching and convulsing in a pool of someone else’s blood. Pikachu was nearby and he wasn’t moving (yet).

You can’t actually kill a pokémonstrosity. If you do them enough damage, they black out. If you keep pounding on them after they’ve passed out, they go ghost. They just sort of fade away into nothingness and turn up again later. One of the many signs that they do not originate from our plane of existence. I’ve never heard of a sheep or a squirrel dematerialising if you kick the shit out of it’s corpse.

Unless you’ve been there yourself, you cannot imagine the feeling of immense, rip-roaring satisfaction I felt as I dragged my semi-electrocuted body to it’s feet, fumbled the first pokéball out of it’s webbing, stumbled over to my defeated nemesis and slammed my ball into his passed out face.

Back in the old world, they had a word: science. It’s a lovely word and I’ve always been a fan. It means that things can be understood. Cause and effect and be explained. The world of science makes sense. Then the portal ring came and flooded our planet with monstrosities from another dimension. This shit could not be scienced. In fact, these monstrosities seemed to actively hate science. They were drawn towards anything high-tech, or high-powered. Shit like computers and power-plants attract them like moths to a flame (except the moths destroy everything, including the comm that tended the fire).

The people of the Fall, they tried to science them. They tried to capture them, study them, understand their enemy. They were overwhelmed. The people who made progress were the madmen who didn’t put their faith in rules and logic. They were the folk who heard voices, folk who stabbed dolls with pins, and folk who held hands and chanted strange shit over arcane symbols. They’d never been at home in the age of science, but the pokémonstrosities had started a new age; magic. They came together from all over the world with bits of lore and intuition; fragments of knowledge gleaned from dark corners. They became the Mission.

The Missions say these creatures ain't new. Demons, deities, kaiju, spirits or monsters - call them what you will, but they’ve always been in the hell-dimension next door. They used to break through, one at a time, now and then, but the arrival of the portal ring was a full scale jailbreak. If you believe the Mission, pokémon were men and women once; they died but refused to accept their time was done, and lurked at the window peering in, instead of moving on to the next life. Their time spent in that unnatural purgatory twisted them into the terrifying creatures that have now returned.

It was the Mission who destroyed the portal ring. It was the the Mission who figured out how to make pokéballs and bind them to summoners. It was the Mission who transformed shards of the portal into the pokévault, created those creepy-as-fuck pokédex skulls, and gave the world the words and tools to understand them and fight back.

Mad as those priests are, and much as I hate them individually, the Mission gave us hope.

I’m a man of science living in an age of magic. I can’t really explain what happens when you slam an empty pokéball onto a passed out pokémonstrosity. The ball goes zzzzp… zzzzp… zshPING, as it opens and closes, there’s all these sparkles in the air, and then the pokémonstrosity is gone. Then the summoner has a battle of wills with the pokémonstrosity to bind it - which is what I then did with the pikachu.

Imagine being in total darkness, deep underwater. In your hand is a hose and you know that it leads to cool fresh air, if you can just pull it to you mouth and take a breath. But someone else has also got a hand on the hose, and they’re trying to pull it to their mouth instead. Neither of you want to share. Now imagine you’ve got no hands. That’s what a battle of wills is like.

You have to want to live more than the other guy. It only takes a second, but it feels a lot longer. If the summoner wins, the pokémonstrosity gets crammed into the ball (somehow). If the summoner doesn’t win, they stop breathing and die on the spot. Sounds fun, right?

I didn’t die.

And that’s how it went from being ‘the’ pikachu to ‘my’ pikachu. The air stopped sparkling. The pikachu was gone. And when I picked my pokeball up, it felt heavier; not a lot, but to someone who’d spent hundreds of hours handling them, noticeably so. I tucked the ball back in the bandolier, reclaimed my boots, and resumed my commute home.

I can’t say a great deal passed through my thoughts for the rest of that walk. Shock. Exhaustion. Overload. Whatever. I do remember wondering if all the blood on my clothes was going to be a problem.

It was about three A.M. so I didn’t see another soul until I hit the central ‘Apple’ stairway. It was a guard on patrol - I knew him, Sammy. He’s an ass. We were in the academy together for a couple of years before he dropped out.

“Ketchum! You look like shit, dude. Survived the ritual though! Please tell me that’s not the Prof’s blood?”

“It’s not Willow,” I say flatly, “and it’s not me.”

Sammy does a little shoulder jive, which I take to mean ‘so where the fuck did all the blood come from then, dude?’.

“There was an explosion down on Anarchy. You didn’t hear it? Two lab boys dead. I was too late to help.”

Sammy’s eyes widened. I didn’t tell him about Pikachu. Better to have something up my sleeve than brag, and I was leaving town in the morning anyway. This version of the story had less words. Less words equals good. Sleep sooner. Yes, please?

“Anyone else injured?” Sammy asked.

“Nobody I saw. I didn’t explore the other side of the blast.”

“Well, fuck, son.” Sammy exclaimed. “My ass is grass when the Captain finds out I was banging his daughter instead of patrolling PT-under when shit was blowing-up!”

Like I said, Sammy is a tool. I nodded seriously as if this was in fact the important aspect of the situation.

“I gotta go horizontal, Sammy. The ritual, you know. And I’ve got my starter tomorrow. You got this?” I hated myself for speaking that way. I even said “Bro?” at the end.

“Yeah, course bro, I’ve got this. Go. Sleep, whatever. Shit, this is your last night in town, rockstar. You should be spending it celebrating, balls-deep in pussy, not down the nick with me giving a statement. I’ll take a wander down Anarchy way and maybe call it in like I found it myself.”

I nodded my thanks, feeling no inclination whatsoever to explain that I’d already shot my load three times that night, before taking down a killer pokemon’ barehanded.

Before I left, I lifted my chin to show Sammy the trigger-disk scar at my throat.

“The name’s Ash now.”

Sammy offered me a fist bump and an epic stage-whisper, “my main man, Ash Ketchum, in the flesh, yo!”

I didn’t know the two guys in lab coats who pikachu had killed, but it saddened me, in an abstract way, that they were dead and Sammy Ho was still breathing.

I attracted a few shocked stares as I trudged through PT-over, but nobody else tried to speak to me.

The shack I share with Ma is a rugged A-frame, constructed (appropriately) of Ash. I helped my Da build it when I was about twelve. It was only meant to be temporary, until the proper cabin went up. But then he died, and the frame stayed. Neither of us spent much time at home, but it had done Da proud as a warm dry place to rest our heads.

Ma was there now, chewing her nails, waiting for me.

“Hi Ma,” I said. “I’ve had a kind of rough night, but I’m fine. I’ma gonna hit the hay ‘bout now.”

She may have replied. I think she just hugged me. Someone undressed me, because I weren’t wearing my bloody garb when I woke-up to get some water in the night, and I don’t think it were me, so it must’ve been her.

She’s a good Ma.


	3. Joy for All

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this hot-off-the-press before I start re-reading and nitpicking :-)  
> If you spot any continuity errors (or typos) please shout in the comments.
> 
> Note to self: need to check the timeline to make sure there's enough hours in one night for all these shenanigans...  
> Second note: also need to add e-acute wherever Pokemon (or a derivative) is mentioned...

Have you ever taken a hallucinogenic drug? Natural variants like ‘shrooms, or homebrew mashups like cactus soup - or if you could afford them, those sharpened chemical tabs, like lucidium? Every kid from Pallet Town has, and they’d understand what I meant by fucked-up, post-tripping dreams. The kind where you’re not quite sure if your life, or the dream is the real one - or if we’re all part of someone else’s dream. Yeah. Sounds bullshit if you try and explain it in the sober light of day, but there’s a certain kind of existential panic with which my PT peers will immediately identify.

Apparently the toxic gloop that pokeball triggers soak in before they melt their way into your skin is a lot like liquid lucidium, which explains it - but nobody explained that beforehand.

So there I was, totally spinning out, trying to reconcile myself to the the fact I am a physical expression of God’s subconscious trying to cope with it’s own divine mental illness… when I snapped fully awake. I opened my eyes but everything was still black. I tried to sit up, but my wrists were tied down. I drew a handful of startled breaths, but before I could scream my mouth was smothered in kisses. Suddenly there were hands on me, it felt like a lot of hands, pushing on my chest, raking up my arm, and massaging my legs. My fevered brain saw a trill of pink bubbles in the darkness as someone delicate and feminine giggled.

What. The. Fuck.  
That’s about as far as my thoughts could get.

“Shhhhh,” the world whispered, the tip of her tongue twirling in my ear. “Don’t be scared.”

That voice. I knew that voice. The dreamlike edge was starting to drift, to be replaced with a kind of high-voltage alertness that has never again left me. That’s what I get for stuffing a pikachu in my crown-chakra pokéball, I suppose.

“Joie,” I whispered.

“Hold your tongue,” she murmured back. “It has a lot of work to do.”

There was that giggle again, somewhere down by my feet, distracting me as the mattress rocked around my head. Then there was that soft, intoxicating scent, driving all other considerations far, far, away, as Joie lowered her naked, wet pussy onto my face.

The other one was probably Ilo, she and Joie were always thick as thieves and one of my earliest fumbles in the dark had been with Ilo, so I knew she had a soft-spot for me.

When you’re tied-up and blindfolded, it really does focus your attention on the things you can sense and control. I spent a couple of minutes exploring. Just, lightly, ever so lightly, running the tip of my tongue up and down Joie’s slit; mapping the curves and contours, acclimatising to the sound of her breathing and the occasional shiver in her legs.

“They told me, you know,” she said in this sensual drawl, “how skilled your silver tongue is. I wasn’t sure if I believed it, but there was no way I could let you walk out that gate without finding out for myself.”

Up and down, slowly, lovingly, I gently teased the folds and ridges of her labia apart, noting which, more sensitive areas, made Joie’s breaths come faster.

“We weren’t lying, were we?” That was the other voice. The giggler. Not Ilo, surprisingly. It was Ananda. Now there’s a turn-up! Ananda was bookish, reserved. We’d spent a fun couple of hours together, in the back stacks of the lower library. Just once. She’d avoided me after that and I’d thought she’d changed her mind about me. Never would have pictured her as Joie’s wing-woman for a raunchy little stunt like this. I guess we all have hidden depths.

Ananda’s fingers trailed across my cheek at a leisurely pace, and I was pretty sure from the way Joie froze that they continued onwards, scritching the sensitive skin of her navel. At that sort of speed they would be crossing the belly, and reaching the breasts about… now. And there’s the little gasp and shudder from Joie. I remember how much Ananda liked pinching nipples. Maybe she’s here for Joie, more than me?

Joie’s really wet by now. I wish I could see her face. I feel like I’ve mapped out the territory, I know which buttons to push, so it’s time to go to work properly. 

Fast, long thrusts of my tongue, delving into her soft depths. That scores me a low moan. I follow it up with a firm swirling figure-eight pattern over her clit. Not too hard, but with the full, flat surface of my tongue to really mush it around. More of a trembling whimper escapes Joie’s lips for that one. I go back to tongue-fucking her, but making broad, circular laps. No noises for that one, she clamps her teeth shut and grinds her pussy down onto my mouth instead. And for that I reward her with some precision work on her clit, hard strokes down it’s length, pinning and pressing the tip at the end of each stroke.

These four patterns are my cornerstones with Joie. I varied the pattern, the tempo, the pressure, etc. I’d give her some breathing space to let her level out if I’d ramped it up too far - I wasn’t planning to let her cum just yet - she hadn’t started begging, and I was having fun.

Then Ananda totally broke my concentration, in admittedly the most pleasant way. Apart from the odd sharp flex from Joie’s hips, which I assumed were as a result of Ananda’s occasional nipple tweaks, I’d almost forgotten she was there. Then she started sucking me off.

This wasn’t up there with Willow’s work during the ritual - I genuinely think he may have saved my sanity with that blowjob - but nor was this a nervous cock-sucker, learning the ropes. This girl knew what she was doing and set to it with enthusiasm.

My focus on Joie’s pussy, my pattern, and the inexorable build-up I’d planned, to have Joie begging me to let her cum… that all went to hell. I was just aimlessly licking, like a cat at a saucer of milk, while my attention screamed towards my cock. Damn, Joi was going to be pissed with Ananda when she realised I can’t do two things at once…

...but then Ananda tweaked. Joie’s nippled again. Hard. And she said “Owww, that hurt.”

And Ananda said, “Good.” I could hear the smile on her lips.

But if Ananda’s talking, and tweaking nipples… who is sucking my cock?!

“Ananda, who else is here?” I asked, kind of breathlessly.

“Oh,” said Joie. “Just me. And Annie of course. And Ilo too.” Hah! I had been right about Ilo. Why did Joie sound so smug? She was twisting her body above me, to look back at my feet. Shifting her weight, moving her arms. “And…”

“Hare,” came a fourth girl’s voice, from near my feet.  
“Llawenydd,” said the fifth girl.  
“Glädje,” giggled the sixth.  
“Athas too,” and that was seven. “And we’re all enjoying the show.”

I had an audience. I needed time to process that. I tried to turn back to Joie, seeking peace in her silky folds, but she pulled away and straddled my chest. Ilo disengaged too. Suddenly nobody was touching me, but everyone was looking at me, and I couldn’t see them. The moment spun, and I felt vulnerable and I didn’t like it at all.

“No, no,” cooed Joie, rubbing her thumb over the head of my cock, which sprung back to meet her touch. “No flagging on me. We’re not finished yet.”

She started a gradual shuffle down the bed towards my hips.

“They didn’t just tell me about your silver tongue, you know. They told me how you like to make girls beg. How you get off on it. I’m not letting you do that to me. You’re the one who’s tied up. I’m in control. You’re the one who begs to cum.”

I thought about the night I’d had with Willow. That tank had been well and truly emptied. She could ride me a long, long time without me begging. But if that’s how she wanted to play this... 

I lay back, relaxing onto my pillow. “As you wish, Mistress Joie. I shall not speak again, until I’m ready to start begging.”

“Oh, I like that,” she purred. “Do you really have to leave? Such a waste.”

With that, she lowered herself onto my cock, and it was wet and tight and velvety, and everything good and satisfying in this world, and my eyelids trembled under my blindfold. We fit like a lock and key. 

“Ladies,” Ananda commanded, “don’t just stand there.”

The other four girls shuffled forward at this, surrounding the bed, and began to kiss and caress me. I’d assume, from the varied noises, they also began to kiss and caress Ilo, Ananda and Joie too, but what with the blindfold it was hard to be sure.

“No need,” Ananda commanded, “to be gentle with the boy.”

Again, I remembered her nipple pinching, and I remember her seeing the appreciation in my eyes.

The kisses soon turned into nibbles and bites. The caresses turned into scratches and slaps. I just lay back and let the sensations roll over me and over me and over me. It was bliss.

I can’t say with any real accuracy how long it went on for. At some point a dildo was placed in each of my hands. I couldn’t move much beyond the wrist, but I could (and did) help brace them against the outside edge of the headboard for the girls to rock back on. Various pussies, asses and fingers were pressed against my mouth. I ate everything I could in a straight-up hedonistic assault.

Every now and then Joie would ask if I was ready to start begging, but I never replied. I never even shook my head, I just let her keep riding me. She wasn’t going fast. She couldn’t cope with fast. I could hear her voice getting more and more ragged.

Eventually I heard what I’d been waiting for, it was Ananda, muttering gently to Joie.

“You can’t keep this up much longer. I don’t think you can win this one.”

There was a long pause. Joie slid up and down my shaft one more time.

“I need to cum,” Joie confessed.

That was the cue I’d been waiting for, and I didn’t think here was anybody kneeling over my head at the moment.

I’d sussed some time ago how the wrist straps had been tied, and in all the commotion I’d rocked the knots enough to make some slack. Now, with a sharp yank, I released the dildos, squeezed my wrists through and pulled off the blindfold. The sight that met my eyes will remain seared into my memory forever.

They say that Nurse Joy was once the head witch of The Mission council, and on her deathbed the rest of the council performed some kind of mega-ritual, as per her written instructions. She died immediately, but every child conceived by a priest of The Mission from that day forth has been Nurse Joy reborn. They’re all identical. All clones. They’re all called Joy in different language. All gorgeous. All mental. And all, always, deliciously, horny as fuck.

The Nurse’s all live in a complex in the center of PT-above called the Pokécenter. There’s one in every town with a Mission Church (to house their offspring). Only Mission-Priests and Summoners are allowed inside, to visit their children and heal their pokémonstrosities respectively. There are all kinds of stories about what goes on inside those walls.

Joie was oldest of this pack; a little older than me at twenty-one, tall slim, totally naked, straddling my cock, small breast pulled back as she arches backwards, one hand on her clit, long blonde hair streaming down, beads of sweat on her brow, and total shock in her eyes as I shook the blindfold free. 

Ananda was a little younger, about nineteen I think, and she was kneeling behind Joie, between my legs. Annie was still entirely dressed in her nurse’s scrubs as far as I could see. Joie was leaning back on her for support, and Ananda had one hand up on her Joie’s boobs, the other around Joie’s throat, choking her just a little bit - I approved.

Ilo had reacted first to my escape, apparently the dildo in my right hand had been in her ass. She was also totally starkers, and had one leg up on the edge of the bed. One of the younger Joys, Glädje I think - she was dressed in a sexy-maid’s outfit - knelt below, fingers and tongue busy-busy on Ilo, who swung a slap at me the second the blindfold came off. I didn’t mind.

I never knew Athas well, but she had a reputation as a bit of a wild-child, even among the Joys. She had Llawenydd bent over the left side of the bed, her face forced down into blankets by my ribs, and was spanking the hell out of her ass. Those cheeks had passed through red, and come out the other side of crisp, livid white. Athas had this look in her eye, like she could keep going all night.

Hare was most passive Joy. She had been sitting on the dildo that had been in my left hand, just rocking and touching herself, and taking in the view. She smiled, shyly as my eyes raked the room.

I sat up, startling them all. When the spanking stopped, Llawenydd pulled her face out the blankets, bleary eyed and grinning/dribbling. I grabbed Joie, one hand tight around her throat, the other cradling the back of her head, and then I collapsed straight back onto the pillow, dragged her with me. She yelped rather satisfyingly. 

I skidded my hips down the bed for better leverage, and then pulled her to my mouth for a rich, passionate kiss as I let loose all that pent-up lack of control. I was like a spring, wound tighter and tighter the more I lay back and let them use me like a toy. I fucked Joie hard and fast and deep; there was nothing more complex to it that that. Her eyes went wide, she completely stopped breathing, and then she screamed orgasmically into our kiss like the most almighty pleasure-siren going off. The noise went up and down and up and down but didn’t stop for stroke after pounding stroke. She ran out of air and fell silent. With one last effort, I slammed into her and came - I’ll admit, it felt victorious.

But then Joie convulsed and jerked sideways and fell off me.

Ananda gasped and rushed to her. Annie looked at me, searching and furious, and my heart stumbled in its beating - I hadn’t done anything! I had no idea what was happening!

Ananda rolled back one of Joie’s eyes and examined it quickly, then turned back to me.

“You just passed the ritual tonight. You don’t get your starter until tomorrow.”  
It was a statement, but it was also a question.  
  
I didn’t know how it was relevant, but you don’t lie to Nurse Joys about your pokémon.  
“I’ve got a pikachu,” I stammered the words, “I caught him on the way home from the ritual.”

Annie and the other Joys relaxed immediately. Ilo reached down to ruffle my hair. I must have still looked baffled. She gently explained. 

“When your pokémon need healing, that energy comes out of our own lifeforce.” When you came, it triggered the healing. Normally, we can cope - but you’d run Joie pretty ragged before you sapped her, so she’s sparked out. She’ll be OK. We know how to look after her.”

I gazed around the room at all these stunning young Joys, in various stages of undress and intercourse. I’m pretty sure Glädje still had her fingers deep inside Ilo as she’d explained to me what had happened to Joie.

“You mean,” I started, struggling to process the enormity of what this meant, “every time I want to heal my pokémonstrosities, I have to go to a Pokécenter and _fuck a Nurse?_ ”

Ilo rolled her shoulder as Glädje hit the right spot.  
“You got it, sugar. The little bastards draw their lifeforce from you, so we’ve got to bond with you, root-chakra to root-chakra, and shunt the power straight through you to them. The only way to get you to open up as the conduit, is via le petite morte. Your little pikachu will be fit as a fiddle now, thanks to Joie.”

I couldn’t think of much to say to this. My life had just got a lot brighter.

“Why didn’t anyone tell me this before now?” was all I could manage.

Ilo bent low, to whisper into my ear or just grant Glädje better access, I couldn’t tell.  
“The priests don’t want you poor, easily influenced young men to become summoners for all the wrong reasons.”

She kissed me then, and sighed into my embrace as Glädje pushed her over the edge far more gently than I’d treated Joie.

Any Joy’s who hadn’t yet climaxed were soon helped over the finishing line by the rest of the pack. I would have liked at least one to stay and snuggle, but they’re not allowed to sleep outside the Pokécenter. Joie had come around by the time they were leaving, and gave me a tender goodbye kiss, before Ananda and Athas carried her off between them.

If you’re wondering where my Ma was during all this… who do you think had let Joie know when I got back? It’s not uncommon for new summoners to receive a visit from the Joys, to ensure they’ve known true joy, lest they die on the morrow. For all she disagrees with my choice of career, my mother does approve of this tradition. She was back by dawn and had breakfast waiting for me. 

Like I said, she’s a good Ma.


	4. Graduation Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, this is hot off the press.  
> I've finished it, so I'm closing my eyes and posting it.  
> If there are typos, shout so I can fix them, I'll give it a re-read in a few days.  
> Fingers crossed it's not dross.

_[word-art chapter number to be added here when I have a chance to make it]_

Splitting the starter pokémonstrosities isn’t a ‘true’ summoner ritual. It’s more like a tradition that’s become deeply entrenched. Like giving people cake on their birthday.

There are always three new summoners - their exact identities are kept a secret from each other whenever possible. There are always three low-level pokémon for the newbies to chose between - one fire, one water and one grass elemental. 

The ceremony is usually held in the community’s central square, and there are usually four roads entering that square. The new summoners approach, each from a different direction, meet in the square, split the starters, and leave the square together down the fourth road - towards the comm gate. It’s symbolic, or something.

Friends and family come to see them off, as do the teachers, priests and masters who trained them, comm dignitaries and anyone else who’s free and wants to watch the spectacle.

I’d been to a few when I was younger, back before my Da was got. There was always music and food afterwards; people consoled the families the young summoners had left behind. They were somewhere between a celebration and a wake - kind of confusing for a kid.

On the morning of my own departure, I woke feeling pumped. Nurse Joy’s ministrations will do that to a body. I wolfed down my breakfast rations, slurped down my juice, and practically dragged my Ma out the door.

She held my hand as we walked to square, and I let her, because it was my Ma, and as far as she was concerned, I might die today. I didn’t believe that for a second, but Ma’s fret, y’know?

“He’d be proud of you, kiddo” she started, hesitant.

I didn’t want to talk about Da again, so I tried to shrug it off, “don’t start, Ma.”

But she ploughed right on. “Not for taking revenge, or for being a summoner or none of that shit. For being you. For being a good man, that he would’ve been proud to call his son.”

Choked me right up, that did. “He’d be proud of you too, Ma.”

She gave me that one. “Guess we ain’t done too bad without him then, despite everything. Hell, if he’d been here too, we’d probably be running this comm by now.”

We shared a smile at the old joke. “I’ll miss you, Ma.”

“Saying ‘I’ll-Miss-You’ don’t do it a lick of justice, kiddo. Come back and visit the first second you can. And don’t get dead, you hear me?” Her voice was starting to creak under the strain.

“That’s exactly what Willow said. Don’t get dead.”

“Good advice, I reckon.”

It’s not a long walk to the square, and we let the rest of it pass in silence.

> _Shit, I don’t know why you’re interested in what I said to my Ma that day._  
>  _I AM INTERESTED IN EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU, ASH._  
>  _But why? Why me?_  
>  _PLEASE CONTINUE WITH YOUR STORY._  
>  _You make it really hard for me to stay mad._  
>  _I’m sure that’s a kind of cheating._

A priest stopped us a hundred meters from the square. I knew her - Mother of Stars. She had the most incredible dark skin tone - like liquid charcoal - but a smile that could light up a room. She was wearing a red habit covered in intricate black swirls and swoops that made my eyes hurt when I tried to follow them, with little white tassels dangling from the sleeves.

Mother of Stars had coached me a couple of times over the last year, during one dark patch (no pun intended) when I’d been struggling with my red-glyphs and losing too much blood, and again when I hit an overload-point with my studies and couldn’t seem to take any more in. Willow sent for her when he could see I needed a change.

It would have been dead easy to like her... she was witty, sarcastic and scarily powerful. But I also knew she butchered kittens on a daily basis to read the future in their entrails. I tell you, all the priests are fucking loonies.

“Well met, little peacock. Today is a big day to be you. But I’m afraid you must wait here with me until the other baby summoners are ready. You’re early.”

She kissed her teeth at me, and read me up and down. I wore my scratches and bite marks from the night before with pride.

We made small talk for a time; recent sightings of wild pokémon near the comm walls, battle-theory, good places to get a beer when I got to Viridian City. That kind of stuff.

My Ma sat on a kerb nearby and smoked. I felt bad for dragging her out so early - we could’ve waited more comfortably at home, rather than here on the street. I started getting tense.

Willow says the worst bit about war is the waiting. That was the first time I understood what he meant. 

When I get nervous, I need to keep my hands busy. I found myself practicing my pokéball draws. I wear my bandoleer diagonally across my back; the six pokéballs spaced equally from my left shoulder to my right hip. The two balls in the center of your back can be awkward to reach when you first wear a training-rig. There's a lot of different styles for snatching and pitching them; just like baseball. I use a very fluid, twisting collection of draws named after their inventor; in my humble opinion the greatest pokémonstrosity summoner to have fought in this war; Eff Yew. Mother of Stars critiqued my form.

When I caught Pikachu, I didn't consciously choose to use ball one and bind him to my crown chakra, and have him fizzing away in my thoughts. I was very tired and unprepared, and he was already knocked-out, to just took the easiest one to reach, from up on my left shoulder, and bashed him with it. This time I would do it more purposefully. 

Eventually a horn blew from the square and Mother of Stars waved us on.

A large crowd had gathered, they cheered as they saw us approach. My Ma soon left my side to join the crowd and let me enter the square alone. Honestly, my attention was entirely on the three cages in a loose triangle in the center of the square. I had that high-voltage alertness back: the pikachu effect. I felt ready for anything.

Cage one - nearest me - held a chunky little blue critter. From a distance it looked like a big turtle. Because of that similarity, the priests had named them squirtles. It was an unusual choice; they weren’t common around PT. They’re water monstrosity. It’s not until you get up close with them do you realise how alien they are.

Like regular turtles, squirtles have a shell, four legs, a head with a beaky-looking mouth and a tail, but that’s about where the similarities end. The tail is long, thick and powerful, like a god sliced the head off an eel and shoved the rest of the body onto the squirtle as a tail. What you took to be scales from a distance, are far creepier when you get up close; they are eyes. It’s whole body is coated in small, oval eyes. Like an insect’s compound-eyes, but as it’s skin. They’re a deep, shimmering blue. They flicker and pulse as the creature shifts its attention. 

What you initially took to be eyes, are actually hard, dark pits in its face. I can’t remember the stupid name the priests gave that organ, but amongst earth critters the closest equivalent is a dolphin’s echolocation. Something in those pits clicked at a frequency only bats could hear, and listened for the echo. Squirtles use it like a sonar sweep of the area. They are so sensitive to ‘hearing’ that sonar, they can tell the internal structures of objects, not just their location. It can see where your bones are inside your body, and what you have in your pockets. Combine that with the three-sixty field of vision and you have a monstrosity that is hypersensitive to it’s environment. It is impossible to take a squirtle by surprise.

They’re don’t move like turtles out of the water either. The head snaps around fast, like a rattlesnake, and when it strikes the mouth doesn’t snap closed like a turtle beak, but spears forward like a bident (that’s like a trident, but with only two prongs instead of three). 

It stabs into flesh and then either clamps closed like a jaw, or far more disturbing to see, it peels apart like the jaws were the handles of a butterfly knife, folding backwards to release the blade, in this case the squirtles dagger-like “tongue”. In this revolting way, if it gets to close quarters with a bigger monstrosity, like a snorlax, squirtles use their powerful necks to stab their faces into the enemies fleshiest parts, then peel apart their jaw to lever themselves further into its guts, where the tongue will dagger out and spear some vital organ. 

With their ability to sense the internal structure of their opponent and strike with incredible precision, if a good summoner really knew their xeno-anatomy, they could go for one-hit-kills with a squirtle. I thought, ‘I could do a lot of damage with a squirtle’.

Cage two, off to my left a ways, held a charmander. A traditional choice in PT for the fire elemental option. We had a lot of charmanders in our neck of the woods and they are vicious little bastards. They look like a tiny velociraptors, about the size of a rooster, with livid, raw red skin and a constant ball of flame burning on the tips of their little, upturned tails. They move terrifyingly fast and can easily leap up at your face, twisting midair to lash at you with the razor sharp claws on their feet. 

Charmanders aren’t super bright, they’re pretty zeroed-in on attack-kill-destroy from the second they see you. And yes, they’re fast but they’re also predictable, so most summoners can dodge, and counter-hit them pretty consistently. The ones the priests keep for training have their claws filed to stubs, so they can’t cut you, but they still kick hard enough. I once got kicked in the throat training with a charmander, and the docs weren’t sure if I would ever speak again. Obviously I did, but if that pokémonstrosity had been wild, it would have ripped my throat out then eaten my soul.

As for those fires on their tails, if you see one dim for a second, that means the little cunt is about to spit a fireball. In the wild, they eat gravel and pebbles and store them in their stomach-sack; when they pull the heat from their tails, they’ve coughed up a rock in their mouth. They superheat it in a fraction of second then spit them at you. Their aim is pretty erratic, but heaven help-you; if they hit flesh you’ve got a new scar. I’ve seen people with charmander fireballs fused half into their bubbling skin where they’ve got inside boots. Bonus trainer fact: if you feed a charmander metal shards they can spit melting-hot metal bullets!

By far the creepiest thing about about charmanders is the way they take a hit. Imagine the little bastard jumping at your face, and you dodge to the side and kick his ribs in, OK? Their bones crunch in and crackle and snap like dry kindling, like kicking a sculpture made out of glued together lollipop sticks. It flies away and hits the deck, more things crunch most satisfactorily, and you feel happy for half a second. Then the bag of broken flesh inflates itself, it’s ballooned skin remains un-pierced, and the bones all flinch back into place; then it’s up and back at you again. Have you ever seen those wooden children’s toys where you push the button underneath to make the jointed wooden figure, like pinocchio, collapse to the ground? When you release the button it snaps back upright, as all the strings pull taught. 

Fighting a charmander is like fighting a turbo-charged pinocchio-velociraptor wrought in monstrous blood-red flesh. I wasn’t disappointed by this option either, I could definitely work with a charmander.

Turning to cage three I surveyed my final option, the grass type; a bulbasaur. Take a really big, green-brown toad then plant a massive onion on his back. That’s what a bulbasaur looks like. They’re not the scariest looking monstrosity, but they’re certainly not something you’d ever want to bump into alone and unprepared. Like the squirtles, bulbasaurs get weirder the longer you spend close to them. They don’t move; no breathing, blinking, nothing. It’s like a toad statue coated in monochrome, matte, algae-mud. It doesn’t look alive. Then it moves with this eye-watering blur, seeming to phase out of existence in one pose, and returning in another. If you watch one walking for too long, you’re guaranteed to get a headache. 

The toad part is made out of really solid, dense, alien mud, riddled with plant roots that act more like brain-neurons than regular roots. The whole toad is basically a massive unit of super-hard (but moist) brain. Who knows why it’s shaped like a toad? Another bonus trainer fact for you: it hurts like a motherfucker if you try and kick one.

The real nasty business comes from the bulb on it’s back. When the outer petals peel back, it releases the bulbasaur’s vine-tentacles. You can usually tell how many tentacles there will be by the size of the bulb. They’re coiled up in there, wire thin and just as strong. They weave through the air, wrap around their enemies extremities, and then pull tight as a garrotting wire, cutting of circulation. Or there are little suckers on the tips of the vines; if they get them on your chakra points they can literally suck the lifeforce out of you.

If you ever run into one unprepared, your only hope with a wild bulbasaur is to stay out of range and get behind it. If they see you within their reach, you’re in trouble. The material of it’s eyes look like the same muddy substance as the rest of it’s body, but it’s not. They’re a different kind of neural mud, but they can only see forwards. The whipcords are fast but the toad is slow, especially at turning, and it’s got a large blind spot directly behind it. You’ve got to get in low, at the base of the bulb when it can’t see how to grab you, and hack through the vines or wrestle them into a knot while it lashes blindly at you. Or just run; that works too.

I had concerns about the bulbasaur’s mobility in battle, but if I could spend some time getting my head around the way it moves, I’m pretty sure I could train one to move faster.

All in all, the priests had pulled together a solid range of pokémonstrosities to choose from. 

It was time to mean the other two new summoners, my new pack mates, to decide which of us was taking which pokémon.

I had a plan.


	5. A Choice of Three

Like I said, the tradition of splitting-the-starters says that the three newbie summoners shouldn’t know who they’re graduating with until they meet in the square. In reality, comms like PT aren’t big enough to have more than a handful of young summoners ready to graduate at any one time, and we all grew up together; we all trained together just last week. We all knew each other inside and out, literally in some cases. There were only five others who were ready.

Scanning around the square, I realised I was the first graduate to arrive. My gaze flickered through the crowd, which was applauding my arrival, and I quickly spotted Bonnie, Clement and Serena all standing together holding beers. If those three weren’t graduating with me, then… holy fuck!

“Misty!” I yelled, at the top of my lungs. The crowd went silent.  
“Brock!” I yelled even louder.  
“Hurry the fuck up!”

Misty sauntered around the corner from Shaft and the applause started up again. Of course she sauntered. Misty doesn’t know to walk without sauntering. She’s not a tall girl, but she’s in top physical shape; she puts me to shame both on the track and on the apparatus. She’s wasn’t always so fast in the classroom, mainly because she couldn’t stop baiting the professors and her classmates, but she still had enough smarts to pass the mad priests’ exams and be there, graduating with me that day.

She was wearing a long white summer dress with small daisies on it. She had a wide-brimmed floppy hat. The girl was wearing red sunglasses and was sucking on this long red ice-lolly. Her curly red hair was flaring out in the breeze. She looked cool as a cucumber, like she was going to a wedding or something. Misty has always been awesome.

So Misty sauntered up to me, presented each cheek for a kiss, and then turned away, waving to the crowd. We had real monstrosities to deal with and Misty was milking the applause; she’s unbelievable.

Curving around the cages, from the far side of the square, came Brock. It had to be Brock, didn’t it? Brock had been my wingman since we could walk well enough to steal cookies. He was a head taller than me, with a wild mop of dreadlocks and a short beard that made him look twice our age. He was built like the proverbial shithouse, and was damn proficient with every weapon in the arsenal. Brock and I looked nothing alike, but we were like brothers. 

I’d barely spoken to him for over a year; since he announced he was going to be become an ordained priest. He knew exactly how I felt about the priests, we’d spoken about it so many times, and he’d never given any suggestion he felt any different. Then one day he’s just like, ‘Hey Ketch, I won’t be in class with you tomorrow. I’m walking the first veil with Pattern.’ That’s something you only do if you want to be a priest. And it turned out I was the last to know, he’d told other people days or weeks before, and deliberately kept it a secret from me. Things had been pretty fucking frosty since then.

On balance, I was pissed that we had a priest in the pack, but I was reluctantly delighted I had a chance to work things out with Brock. If we hadn’t graduated together, who knows when we’d next meet. If we would both survive that long. It would take a bit of time to get my head around Brock as a priest, that’s all.

He wrapped both of us up in a massive bear-hug, then smiled down at us, seriously.

“Well met, my pack.” He intoned.

I bristled a little at the inference of ownership in that greeting. Pecking order can be a big deal in some packs, changing hands many times. In others, it’s established early and stays fixed. I had no intention of being the Beta or the Omega in this trio: I planned to be the Alpha. I also knew that Misty and Brock saw themselves as Alpha-material, so I wondered which of them would end up our Omega. 

The crowd was far enough back that they couldn’t hear our conversation over the shrieks of the charmander.

“Ketchum, you called me Misty,” pouted Misty. “The name is Strawberry now.”

“Not Ketchum; Ash.” I replied, smiling.

“Ash, of course,” boomed Brock. “But Strawberry wood? I didn’t think that grew thick enough for making balls.”

Strawberry licked the drips off her lolly provocatively. “That’s what priests say. Priests can be wrong. Or maybe I’m just better at judging wood.”

Brock took that in good grace, and held his hand out.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Strawberry. I am Hickory.”

“Of course you are.” Strawberry drawled, not shaking his hand. “Aren’t all wannabe priests called Hickory these days?”

“Only those of us who feel an affinity for his great work,” said Brock.

“Enough small talk, please?” I interjected impatiently. “Now’s not the time. We’ve got pokemon to catch. Let me tell you how I see this going down.”

When a summoner says they’re unprepared, they don’t mean it in the broader sense. They mean they’re not packing heat; they’ve either not got their balls with them, or their balls are empty or clocked-out. Likewise, if they say they’re fully prepared, they mean they’ve got all six chambers, locked and loaded in mint condition. 

“I’m not unprepared,” I muttered . “Let me take all three down, and I get first pick.”

“You’re already prepared? How?” exclaimed Hickory

“Later,” I said.

He shrugged and nodded. 

“I don’t know, rock star,” Misty argued. “If you draw a surprise pokemon out of nowhere at our graduation, that story’s going to spread. I get how that feeds your cutesy messiah complex, but I don’t see why I should get stiffed for your showboating. I’d cope just fine without you here and I want first pick. What say we flip it around?. If we let you pull your little stunt, we both get to chose before you. Brockery here picks second, as he would’ve been pretty-and-dumb enough to let you go first if I weren’t here to look out for him.”

She was kind of right; Misty usually is. I could work with any of these monstrosities. It was more important to me that I had a rep as that kid who brought his own pokemon to a starter ceremony.

“Deal,” I agreed.

Misty hesitated. I’d agreed too quickly. Finally she nodded. The battle was on!

Reaching up to my left shoulder I plucked ball one, and bullet-bowled it backhand into the center of the cages. “Pikachu! I choose you!” I commanded, loud and clear.

The ball hit the deck, cracked apart, and the air around it twisted like a ball of socks being unfolded, and suddenly there was Pikachu. He was staring at me with burning hate, but he looked well recovered from his capture. Joie’s sacrifice had done him a world of good. I think he would have tried charging at me then, and we’d have needed another battle of wills before I got him back under control, but the squirtle started its aristea song and Pikachu locked-in.

No pokemonstrosity can resist a challenge from another. It doesn’t matter is one is a little level-two catterpie bug, and the other is a terrifying, level-fifty garchomp dragon: if either of them starts the aristea song, they are compelled to square off and battle, and the victor consumes part of the defeated foe’s lifeforce. Any other monstrosities nearby will become passive observers until the battle is concluded, like they’re hypnotised.

You can knock-out the low-tier monstrosities unprepared, if you’re quick and well trained. But no human weapon remains that can take out the big bastards. The only way to do it is to capture the little ones, and train them up until they’re strong enough to take down the big ones. Fight monsters with monsters.

Pikachu and the squirtle faced off, and the charmander fell silent. The bulbasaur remained eerily still, but had rotated at some point to look at Pikachu.

The noises of consternation from the crowd behind me were considerable.

“Thunder Shock!” I screamed.

I think Pikachu unleashed all the frustration he felt at being captured into that attack. His cheeks whiffled then, with a blinding flash, the squirtle was launched backwards in its cage. It slammed against the bars and collapsed to the floor. It’s skin-eyes were crawling with a fizzing web of electricity for a couple of seconds afterwards. It didn’t move again. Pikachu started to scamper towards the cage to feed on his victim, but I didn’t let him.

“Pikachu, Aristaea!” I commanded.

Pikachu gave me another long look of hate, then started its aristaea song; what seemed like a soft, humming tone at the edge of human perception.

The charmander immediately took up the challenge, darting forward as far as it’s chain would permit. They have to chain charmanders round the neck, because otherwise the little pinocchio-raptors brutally crush their body through the cage bars to escape, then flex back into shape the other side.

I directed Pikachu to climb up on top of the cage this time and send his Thunder Shock through the metal of the chain to leave the charmander a still and steaming body on the floor. 

Again, Pikachu started to move towards the body to feed and again I had to command him to stop and perform the aristea. The bulbasaur responded, as I knew it would. 

The bulbasaur was going to be harder. Thunder Shock would stun it’s tentacles for a few seconds, but it would do much else. 

“Quick attack,” I commanded Pikachu. “Get behind it.”

As the two poor schmucks from the Ute’s lab discovered, pikachu are fast. He sprinted straight at the statuesque bulbasaur, so it let it’s vines loose, a dozen whip thin cords unwinding out to hover in a loose cloud around it, the tips reaching all the way outside its cage. As Pikachu came within range the bulbasaur swept a curtain of grasping suckers at him, but Pikachu dodged through them in a slalom, then sprung, twisting to lash at the base of the vines with his small, but razor-sharp claws. He clipped a few vines and cut one clean loose, then tumbled free the other side, dodging his escape neatly through the bars on the other side of the cage.

The bulbasaur jerkily rotated around to face Pikachu again, but my electric-rat kept out of reach. I used the opportunity to move myself, sneaking behind the bulbasaur to the weapon cache at the center of the triangle of cages. Most graduates don’t bring their own monstrosity, so the priests provide a range of weapons for the newbies to subdue their starters with before catching them. I had my eye on a bardiche; a long thin axe on a pole. If I could wangle it through the cage bars without clanging them and alerting the toad, my plan was to hack off it’s vines from behind.

I was so god-damn careful maneuvering that weapon through the bars, and getting a good grip with both my arms stuck though. The bulbasaur was still unaware how close I’d snuck. 

“Tackle!” I commanded Pikachu, and the bulbasaur’s vines snapped out towards me. It was flailing blindly, but it still managed to get one wrapped around my wrist, and another around the bardiche. They weren’t quite strong enough to wrench the weapon out of my hand, but plenty strong enough to make aiming it difficult, as I hacked madly at it’s bulb. I took another two vines off at the base, but it wasn’t the total buzz-cut I’d been visualising. Pikachu dodged in through the vines at the front again, leapt up neatly onto the bulbasaur’s face and started digging industriously into the neural-soil of its eyes.

The bulbasaur released me and my weapon and turned every vine on Pikachu. It seized him and squeezed him and crushed both his front shoulders bones. Pikachu blacked out instantly; it was a kamikaze run, but it worked perfectly as a distraction. I got a sweet swing a the bulb and took the whole alien onion off in one chop. The vines fell to the cage floor and twisted slowly by themselves. 

It all went to plan, it worked: but I hadn’t expected the feedback from Pikachu’s pain to be quite so intense. Of course, I knew that summoners felt a wave of pain when their monstrosities were knocked out in battle, but it’s usually described on a pain level akin to a sucker-punch to the gut - that’s what I was braced for. I hadn’t expected to feel my own bones crushing and skin tearing like wet paper. It took every last inch of self-control to keep my arms moving and swing the bardiche on target. But I did it. I walked around to the front of the cage, where the vineless bulbasaur was staring at Pikachu’s corpse with its one remaining eye.

“Return,” I said wheezily, pointing my crown-pokeball at Pikachu. He did that thing again, like when I first caught him, and shimmered back inside his ball.

As soon as I’d cut off the bulbasaur’s vines, I saw Misty and Brock set off towards their chosen starters. Misty took the squirtle. Brock took the charmander. I was left with the bulbasaur in front of me.

“How about you tough guy?” I coughed out. “Do you want to wait for me to go get the keys to your cage, then come in there with a spade and dig your other eye out? Or do you want to get in the ball, like a good little demon?”

I carefully selected my sacral-pokeball, that’s the second bottom one, above the root but below the navel. Bonding a monstrosity to your sacral chakra allows it to influence your sexuality, you relationships, and any addictions or neurosis you harbour. A strong ice monster badly placed in the sacral-ball can turn a promiscuous summoner celibate, make them feel utterly dependant on their partner or pack, supercharge that old spark-dust addiction they thought they’d kicked, and drain them of any shred of self-belief and conviction. It’s an old adage to always keep your weakest non-elemental pokemon in the sacral-ball. 

According to Profession Willow’s studies, a grass-type in the sacral is more likely to push a summoner towards enthusiastic bisexuality, polygamous relationship, a rash attraction to all mind-altering substances, and a juvenile sense of mischief. It thought that sounded like a pretty good match for me. Now that I think about it, Willow always carried a pure-grass Meganium in his own sacral.

I rolled the pokeball over to the bulbasaur’s feet. I felt the connection immediately, but there was nothing to drag in, the monstrosity was still conscious. I could only get it into the ball if it came voluntarily. I shrugged, like it was no big thing.

“I could always play with the flamethrower for a bit, before I get the spade I suppose,” I mused.

With a sound like a gong, the pokemonstrosity stopped being in the cage, and I felt it flood into the ball. I’ll admit it, I fist-pumped at that moment; I’m that guy. But damn it felt satisfying. I felt good; alive and victorious and two steps down the road to greatness.

Then came the applause, then the hugging and the crying and stuff. People kept asking where I got Pikachu from, and I wouldn’t say. The Captain wanted to speak to me about the explosion in PT-below, but my ma wasn’t willing to share my last few minutes. Then we three left with the roar of applause at our back, down the dusty road that led to the gate.

Misty was immediately digging at me. “That was pretty cold, what you did; kamikazeing the pikachu. You could have kept the toad hopping between you and nicked a vine at a time until it was finished. It would have taken longer, but you and the rat could have walked out of there together.”

She was right. It wasn’t a conscious choice. I’d only caught Pikachu the night before, and I’d made up my battle tactics on the fly, but my instinct had been to gamble for the quick kills, rather than play the slower, safer game. 

In a longer campaign, like the journey we were about to embark on, you could keep a demon recovering from its injuries for fight after fight with the judicial application of various drugs, which were amply supplied by the priests - but only if you kept winning or escaping. One KO and that ball is firing blanks until the next time you see a Nurse. 

In a one-off encounter like this, it didn’t matter a great deal, because there would be a pack of Nurses at the gatehouse to heal our pokemonstrosities before we stepped out the gate. The mad priests aren’t quite cruel enough to send a new pack of summoners out into the wild without any conscious demons. 

I paused at that thought, because I’d never before understood what that gatehouse healing entailed, but with my newfound knowledge of the healing arts, my expectations for our next stop shot up considerably.

Misty and Brock, sorry Strawberry and Hickory, were still waiting for my answer.

“I was in a hurry,” I shrugged. “There is, like, a whole world waiting to be saved, right?”

That got a laugh from Brock.

“Besides,” I continued, “right now that pikachu still hates me. If it wasn’t fighting them, it would be trying to kill me. So the only way we were walking out of there together, was with him back in his ball. He is a strong little fuck, and I didn’t fancy another mind-wrestle thing morning, if I could avoid it, so I let the toad squash the rat before I gave it a haircut. Job done. On to fucking the Nurses, eh?”

That got a laugh from Brock and Misty. “Doing what to the Nurses?” Brock asked, jovially astonished.

Misty wasn’t making any lewd comments either. I realised, with elation that neither of them knew. “Pop quiz,” I said, “for ten points: how exactly does a Nurse Joy heal an injured or sparked-out pokemon?”

“It’s a tennant mystery,” Brock-Hickory explained. “Branches do not ask each other their tennant mysteries. I would never ask the ladies in pink to tell me their secret ways. Just like the Nurses would not ask the Indexers what precisely voices their skulls. And the Indexers wouldn’t ask the Vaultsmen how exactly they control pokeshards. All branches of the priesthood respect each other, Ash.”

I was really struggling to keep my face deadpan. “Last night,” I replied seriously, “I was visited by a pack of Nurses who healed the pikachu after I’d caught him. You could say, I’ve been inducted into the tennant mystery of the Nurses, and I know what awaits us down this road.”

“What?” asked Misty.

“A treat.”


	6. Recharge The Freak In Me

The gatehouse is nothing more than a short concrete tower; a couple of stout rooms on top of each other, with the sentry point on top of that. The curtains were closed and a red-clad priest, Brother-On-Time stood at the door, leaning on his staff. 

“That was fast,” he called, as we neared. “The horn only blew a few minutes ago.”

“Yeah, well,” I called back. “Places to go, worlds to save; hate to rush but you know how it is. We’ve got some banged-up critters than need recharging, real urgent. Are the Nurses already in there?”

“They are indeed,” Brother-On-Time conceded pleasantly. “Please, step inside.”

We did. Hickory closed the thick wooden door behind us, then let the long curtain fall back over the door. At the dining table sat Nurse Vreugde; PT’s ranking Nurse. She’s a Joy-clone, like Joie’s gang, but she was much older, late fifties. Vreudge lost both legs above the knees as a child; nidoran bites to her calves had to be amputated before too much poison spread to her organs. She was left weak, and unable to fulfil her order’s usually role as a healer of pokemon, she instead devoted herself to the study of her sisters’ art, and the administration of PT’s pokemon center. She was damn close to a Professor, for a Nurse.

“Congratulations,” she greeted us, holding a pocketwatch, “You’ve set a new comm record for the fastest graduation in the book.”

I put both hands up, and Misty and Brock begrudgingly high-fived me.

“Who claimed which starter?” she asked.

“I got the squirtle!” Misty exclaimed in delight.

“I have the charmander,” Brock confirmed.

“I’ve got one bulbasaur, and one pikachu in need of a recharge, please ma’am,” I finished.

“Yes. Ananda did mention your secret electric friend. Joie’s fine, by the way. She can’t be here this morning but she sends her love,” Vreudge said. “Does your pack have a name yet?” 

I shook my head.

“Try to agree one before you reach Vermillion City, please. It makes paperwork so much easier.” She waited, so I nodded. “It’s your first time doing this, but we don’t have all day, so I’ll give you the abridged lecture now, and if you want to learn more, please ask for my counterpart in the City, Bayar Khöör.”

“As you’re aware, we Nurses heal your pokemon for you. We push lifeforce down the chakra channels you’ve bonded your pokemon to. But those are your channels, not ours. We have no link to your pokemon, except through you. My sisters upstairs will make you comfortable, and then use you as a conduit to channel this pulse of lifeforce through to your wounded pokemon.”

I giggled when she said they’d ‘use me’.

“As Ash here already knows, for that energy to flow we need to remove your consciousness from the chakra gates for an instant, so your natural self-control does not block the channels. We can remove your consciousness in three ways; you can, of course, choose whichever you prefer.”

She held up her fingers to count. “One. Death. At the moment of a summoners death, a Nurse may recharge his monstrosities one final time. Not many summoners chose this option.”

We laughed, good naturedly.

“Two. Knocking you unconscious. Either a bonk on the head, or some fumes to make you sleep. Not many summoner chose this option either.”

“Three. Le petite mort, the little death. At the moment of orgasm, the mind goes away from the body all by itself. The channels are clear, and a nurse can flood through a summoner’s network of energy to restore one of the bonded monstrosities to full, fighting fitness once more.”

“Wait,” I said, “it only heals one monster? So I’ve got to petite mort deux times?”

“Indeed,” she confirmed. “If you are at your leisure, you may wish to indulge yourself with the au-naturel approach, as young Ash did last night. But there are more days, like today, where time and action is of the essence. We nurses have a range of fairy dusts to aid us in clearing the channels quickly, reliably and repeatedly; there are battlefield nurses who can recharge all six of your bonded demons in less than a minute, with military precision”

Well ain’t that just a thought to give a man pause. Recharge your weapon, soldier. Yes sir!

“What if I ain’t into girls?” chipped in Misty.

“It does not need to be a nurse who instigates the orgasm. You can do it yourself, or seek assistance from your packmates, or another summoner, that’s not a problem. But a nurse does need to be in close contact for the energy to flow. They can cuddle you, or touch foreheads - whatever your prefer.”

“Why aren’t you summoners yourselves? You could recharge your own pokemon. Why work through us?” Brock asked.

“Last question,” replied Nurse Vreudge, “we really must be getting on. You use your energy to control pokemon. We use ours to heal them. No one person can do both. Now please, upstairs with you.”

She gestured to the narrow staircase at the side of the room, and we tromped up it, Brock and Misty ahead of me. 

“Hickory. Strawberry. Ash. Congratulations.” It was Ananda greeting us at the top of the stairs. 

There were six Joys sat in cross-legged meditation around the edges of the room, wearing light white shifts. In the center of the room were a pile of large, furred, beanbags. There was a stack of boxes and trays covered in scarves at the back. Two nurses were standing to meet us, in full nurse uniform. One was Ananda, and the other was one of the older militant-Joys, Santēāṣaṁ. She wore a leather jacket over her uniform and was smoking a cigarette. There was something unnerving about her gaze, like the mad glittering stare of a sableye. 

Santēāṣaṁ took over where Vreudge left over. “Yes, our girls will fuck you whenever you need us to. If you turn out to be good summoners, we will extend to you every courtesy to assist the healing process in whatever debased manner you most enjoy. But you are not great summoners yet. You are not even blooded summoners, so you don’t get the full works, so to speak.” 

“Remember though, every time you fuck us; we do it in thanks for the work you do. We do it in praise of the Mission. We do not love you, as individuals. We are not your girlfriends. Do not imagine that one day one of us will leave the Order and marry you. We are not like normal women; we are the Order of Joy. Is that understood?”

We all nodded in mute awe.

“To facilitate a smooth first recharge, please do exactly as I say.

Anada fetched the first tray, and unveiled it. A rack of three large test tubes, stopped with chunky orange rubber stoppers, with a tiny amount of pink powder at the bottom of each

“Take the container,” Santēāṣaṁ instructed. “Shake it like a snow-globe. Then pop the top and breath it in. Now, please.”

We did as we were told. When you shake fairydust, it’s like releasing bubbles underwater. It swirls and races around unseen currents then it dissolves into the air. The tube looks pink, but it’s not like it contains smoke or anything; the air inside just looks pink. 

I breathed it in and my throat went numb. I felt half a second of panic as my lungs and chest went numb too; I couldn’t feel if I was still breathing. Then it passed, and my sensory processing exploded into overdrive. Every sense was heightened and my mind felt skittered loose from its regular seat; it felt like I swam in a sea of sounds, touches and images. Ananda collected the test tubes from our unresisting hands, and then three Joys arose, and steered us gently to the bean bags. 

All the nurses started humming this melody; it was slow and pulsing. Under the effects of the fairydust, it was utterly compelling. To us, unsuspecting, it seemed to come out of nowhere, totally synchronised, and just surround us and envelope us. It wasn’t the nurses guiding us to sprawl on the comfy heap of furry bags, it was the melody. We weren’t stumbling dazedly, under the effects of a powerful, mind altering drug, no; we were dancing in the song of life! It was a dance where the nurses knew all the steps, and we could only do our best to follow.

So we danced, and they lay us down and removed our clothes. The tempo of the melody they all hummed changed, as we moved into the second act. The nurses applied their mouths to us, and I swear they kept humming. I could feel the vibrations through my cock. I looked to either side, and Misty’s fingers had curled into claws of pleasure as the nurse applied her tongue directly to Misty’s clit. Brock had another nurse’s mouth wrapped tight around his piece. I could feel my blood rushing to the vibration of the song, eager to join their dance, and my cock got real hard, real fast. As the melody’s second act climaxed, Misty and Brock were already at the same point of breathless eagerness as me. 

The song changed again, and so did the nurses. Three stepped back, away from us, and a new three stepped forward. Two of them moved to straddle Brock and I, taking firm grips on our cocks, and guiding them in smoothly as they lowered themselves straight on. This second round of nurses were already dripping wet, and to our rushing senses, the experience was incredibly intense. It was like I could feel every millimeter of her pussy with my hyper-sensitive, high-definition cock. Misty and Brock’s gasps were echoing my own. I looked over and Misty had nurse fingers in both her holes. On the other side, Brock was staring in wonder at the nurse grinding down on him. I just rode the waves of the song.

The song came to a thrilling, crescendo and so did we all. As our bodies arched up in orgasm, our minds released their already tentative grasp and drifted serenely away. We couldn’t feel it, but the lifeforce of the nurses tipping us over the edge, was pulsing through us, restoring our ravaged pokemon to full health. We couldn’t feel that part, but the nurses could and as we came at the same time to the climax of the song, all three of them fainted, falling backwards into the arms of the nurses behind them.

It had been a long time for Brock, and he kept on coming for a long time. Long enough for me to roll over and watch him, and to realise that I was watching him through untainted eyes. A fairydust high does not survive the little death, it had not returned with us from our orgams.

I felt like spinning around in circles and giggling; it was euphoric. I tried to feel which of my pokemon had been healed. I couldn’t feel the electric fizz in my head, but I could sense a kind of fuzzy, itchy in the pit of my stomach. It made me want to act; to carpe the fuck out of the diem, and the noctum. The closer I tried to examine it, the more it affected me. It made we want to make trouble.

“The bulbasaur’s feeling frisky again, good work nurses. But I’ve still got a smashed up pikachu in need of some loving,” I said. “What’s for round two?”

Santēāṣaṁ beckoned me over. Ananda fetched another vial, and handed it to her as I clambered to my feet. 

“We’ve never before,” she explained, “had to heal a second monster in a graduation ceremony. It’s most irregular.”

She shook the fairydust for me and this time it was a soft dawn over corn shade of yellow. I took it with a little bow and breathed it in. It did not effect me in the same way as the pink flavour had. My vision tunneled instantly. Santēāṣaṁ was still talking to me, and I could see her lips moving somewhere in the far distance, but she wasn’t speaking loud enough for me to hear her. The idea of moving my body was laughable. I wasn’t sure where I’d left my body, let alone how to operate it. 

Time seemed to be going very slowly. I felt incredibly uncomfortable. I couldn’t move my gaze away from her lips, and they were drifting open and closed, forming lip-shapes for words I couldn’t read. It seemed to go on for a very long time, and then it flipped and everything went into super high-speed. There was a lot of movement and sensation to quick for me to process, then Santēāṣaṁ had one hand up around my neck choking me, and the other hand was wanking my cock fiercely. She was grinding herself against my leg.

“Be a good little bitch,” Santēāṣaṁ was hissing into my face. “And cum before I rip your little prick of and eat it.”

So I did. Ananda was there to catch Santēāṣaṁ as she fainted, but nobody was waiting to catch me, so I fell on my ass. Misty and Brock were already dressed and staring at me in amused concern.

“Can’t wait till we all need to heal a full team,” I muttered loudly. They laughed.

The four passed out nurses had taken our place on the pile of beanbags. The four awake nurses helped us get neat and tidy before ushering us back downstairs.

Outside, Brother-in-Time had our travelling packs ready. I didn’t relish the idea of hiking with such a massive bag, but it was all vital kit, and I wouldn’t have to carry it all the way to Vermillion City if one of us could catch a big enough beastie to carry them for us.

“Anyone got an idea for a pack name?” I asked, as we shouldered our packs.

“The PT-Three?” Misty joked. It was a town gag, every graduating trio were ‘The PT-Three’.

“I was thinking we could make something from our totem names, y’know, like an acronym,” I suggested.

“Ash-Strawberry-Hickory. A-S-H. I can’t see why that would appeal to you, Ash?” Brock concluded. “Why don’t we let the journey gives us some ideas? Fate will provide.”

“That better not be you new catch-phrase, Brockery,” Misty said, mocking his serious tones: “Fate will provide.”

“You’ll see, little Misty-flip,” Hickory smiled.

“Ugh!” snarled Strawberry. “Bite me!”

“Strawberries are my favourite dessert,” Hick’s eyes’ sparkled, and I saw Strawberry smile back, just for a second.

The gates were swinging open in front of us. I could feel that pikachu-effect coming back online. We stepped out onto the road.


End file.
